This invention relates to a boat tunnel for enabling boats to operate in shallow water.
The idea of providing boats of special design to travel in shallow water has been known for some time. Air cushion boats, hydrofoils, fan driven boats and water driven boats all have as their purpose the ability of a boat to travel in extremely shallow water. Each one of these particular designs demonstrates concern for the normal operation of a motor with a propeller as a means for driving a boat through the water. The concern, of course, is that the shallowness of water that the boat may operate in with a conventional motor driven propeller is limited by the depth of the water into which the propeller is placed. The propeller must be placed, in the typical arrangement, beneath the hull of the boat in order for proper operation to take place. This is so because the propeller needs to be in water in order to provide propulsion and the water cooling intakes of the standard motor must be in water in order to cool the motor. It is known that, at high speeds, a "rooster tail" is thrown up and wash from the boat itself gathers behind the stern of the boat so that the propeller may be tilted and raised some small amount without reducing the effectiveness of the motor and the forward motion of the boat too much.
A drawback to the shallow water boat designs known in the art, however, is that they typically can not be used in association with a standard outboard motor and motorized propeller. That is, the standard motor and motor driven propeller must remain in a solid stream of water in order to be effectively used. Thus, there is a need in the art for providing a means whereby a standard outboard motor may be utilized on a boat traveling through shallow water. It, therefore, is an object of this invention to provide a boat tunnel system that directs water above the water line so that a standard propeller may be raised above the hull of a boat and still provide propulsion so that the boat can go into very shallow water.